


anthem

by openended



Series: Olivia Shepard [20]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Best Friends, Board Games, Colonist (Mass Effect), Depression, Destroy Ending, Established Relationship, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Friendship, Garrus POV, Goodbyes, Hannah POV, Hannah survives Mindoir, Happy Ending, Heavy Angst, Liara POV, Liara+Garrus friendship, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Olivia+Liara friendship, Olivia+Zaeed friendship, POV Alternating, Phone Calls & Telephones, Post-Reaper War, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reunions, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Shepard POV, Shepard Survives, Starvation, Zaeed is aces at comforting Shepard women, liv and liara have been bffs for fifteen years and that's an important fact, saying goodbye, seriously get tissues for part one, the long slow way home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-18 02:18:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11864577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: There’s a crack in everything.Olivia’s never asked Zaeed what he means by that, but she wants there to be a hopeful second half to the phrase. Eight months is a long time without Garrus.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "Write the scene where Liara's the one to call Olivia at the Crucible, not Hackett," I said. "It'll be _fine_ ," I said. 
> 
> [Narrator Voice] It was not, in fact, fine. 
> 
> Anyway, there is a happy ending to this story, I promise. And I have the whole thing written, I'll post the other two parts later this week.
> 
>  
> 
> [also on tumblr](http://dearophelia.tumblr.com/post/164425593077/anthem-13)

Liara stares out the cockpit window, as if the view is going to change. As if she could blink, and suddenly Earth would turn green and blue again, lush with vibrant cities and beautiful oceans. As if she could blink and all the fires would go out, and the reapers would fall, as if the Citadel’s arms would open.

As if the comms would light up, and she would hear her friend’s voice, her smile clear even through the channel - _all done; someone want to come pick me up?_

Her view doesn’t change, though their comms do light up. But it isn’t Olivia. 

_“Nothing’s happening,”_ Hackett says. _“I can’t raise her. See if you can get her, Dr. T’Soni.”_

“I will,” she says, her voice far clearer and more confident than she feels. She knows what Hackett is asking of her - to confirm Olivia’s death, or convince her to take just a few more steps when she’s already run so far. 

Liara swallows. She silently turns away from the view of fires and the wreckage, walks away from Joker calling after her, walks out of the cockpit and toward the elevator. She doesn’t need her terminal or equipment for this, but she wants more privacy than half the squad’s eyes and ears can allow in the cockpit and CIC. 

And if she is going to make this call, and if she is going to convince her best friend to keep going when they all know that the end of this particular road is death, there’s one more person who needs to hear it. 

The elevator door closes, and Liara takes a deep breath. She switches to their private comm channel. “Olivia,” she says. 

No response. 

“Olivia,” she says a little louder, a little more forceful.

The door opens, revealing an empty mess. “Olivia,” she says again, not quite a yell. 

A groan. And then, “ _Liara?_ ”

Liara exhales. She’s alive. Which means that she can still find a way off this road. Liara knows the score, they all do, but right now - right now she wants to hope. “Hey, Liv.”

A sniff and a hiss. _“Did the_ Normandy _make it out?”_

“Yeah,” she says. “We’re all okay.” Knowing what she’s really asking, Liara manages a small smile. “Garrus is okay.”

James steps out of the medbay, and tilts his head at her. _Shepard_ , she mouths, and leans on one of the tables. 

_“Did it work?”_

“Nothing happened, Liv.” She pulls up the Crucible schematics. She’s been over them with so much detail and so much precision that she could practically draw them blindfolded, and yet she can’t see what else Olivia needs to do.

 _“Anderson’s dead.”_ Another hiss _. “I’m hurt pretty bad,”_ she says. 

Olivia once went half a mission with a broken arm and didn’t say anything until they were back on the ship. For her to admit that she’s hurt _pretty bad_ …Liara closes her eyes.  

 _“I don’t -”_ she takes a deep breath. _“What do you need me to do?”_

Tears spring to Liara’s eyes and she bites her lip. “I need you to get up, Liv.” Her breath shakes. She presses the heels of her palms to her eyes in attempt to stop her tears. It fails.

 _“I can’t, Liara_ ,” she says, voice thick with pain and her own tears. _“It hurts.”_

Liara frantically wipes at her cheeks, though new tears immediately replace the ones she brushed away. “I know,” she breathes. “There has to be another panel. I need you to get up off that floor one more time, Olivia. Please.”

A grunt and a wince, and then the sounds of a body slipping against something slick. She huffs sharply, and then just the grunt and the wince again. _“Can I talk to Garrus?”_ she whispers. 

“Are you standing up?” Liara asks. Through her tears, a small smile tugs at her lips. “You can’t talk to Garrus if you aren’t standing up.”

 _“You’re the worst,”_ Olivia growls, though with an audible smile. 

Liara laughs, though her hot tears fall even harder. “I love you, too.”

A few more moments pass filled with the sounds of someone, whose body is beyond broken, trying to stand. _“I’m up,”_ Olivia says. _“I promise.”_

“I’ll get Garrus,” Liara says, walking toward the medbay. As she passes him, James brushes a hand over her arm - an attempt at comfort. But it’s an umbrella in a hurricane, and doesn’t do much more than remind her that this isn’t some horrible nightmare she’s going to wake up from. She harshly wipes her fingers over her cheeks, trying to look only half as upset as she is. 

Garrus looks up, and his face falls when he sees Liara; half as upset as she feels is still visibly awful, she supposes. _Olivia_ , she mouths at him, and points to her ear. 

_“Liara?_ ”

“Yeah?” Through her tears, she taps at her omnitool bringing Garrus into their channel. She nods at Dr. Chakwas as the woman steps out of her medbay, giving them all a little privacy; she’s far into her own grief, but Liara’s sure she saw the glimmer of a few tears on the doctor’s cheeks. 

Olivia takes a sniffly, shaky breath, and then another _. “Can you find my mom?”_

Liara chokes back a sob and closes her eyes. “Of course.” 

_“Thanks. I love you.”_

Pressing a hand to her forehead, Liara nods. “I love you, Liv. Here’s Garrus.”

She turns, giving the two of them as much privacy as she can, and searches for Hannah’s comm signal. She doesn’t want to make this call, doesn’t want to connect Hannah with the reality that her daughter is probably going to die again, but Olivia asked. 

Liara finds Hannah’s signal and switches to another channel, cutting herself off from Olivia telling Garrus something about a promised bathtub. 

_“Liara_?” Hannah’s voice crackles. 

Liara sighs in relief. “Are you safe?” she asks. Hannah and Zaeed made it off the Citadel before the reapers took it, but the _Orizaba_ ’s signal is broadcasting from Earth. 

_“Yeah. We’re still in one piece_. _”_

Taking a deep breath, and then another, Liara tries to center herself. “I have Olivia on the line,” she says quietly. “She’s with Crucible, but it isn’t working.”

A slow, steady breath. _“Thank you.”_

Liara turns back to Garrus, and nods, silently telling him she has Hannah. She waits for his answering nod, and then clicks back into their conversation.

_“…will get it, Garrus. I promise.”_

His mandibles tighten and he closes his eyes. “I’m holding you to that,” he says gently. “Liv, Liara found your mom.”

“Here she is,” Liara says, and cycles Hannah into the call. 

_“Mom?”_ Olivia sobs.

Olivia sounds so small. So scared. Liara’s shoulders shake with the effort of holding back her own sobs. When she hears the low, sad keening coming from Garrus’ chest, the dam breaks entirely. She wraps her arms around herself. 

_“Hey, Liv,”_ Hannah says, like it’s just another day, just another phone call.

The only sounds are Olivia’s labored breathing and her broken sobs. 

Garrus gestures for Liara to come over. She stands beside his bed, and leans into him when he wraps his arm tight around her shoulders. She settles her arm around his back, holding him close while they listen to Olivia and Hannah. 

_“I’m really tired,”_ Olivia says, through her sobs _. “Everything hurts.”_

 _“I know, sweetie. But we need you to keep going just a little bit longer. And then,”_ Hannah’s voice hitches _, “then you can take a break.”_

Crying, Olivia takes a deep breath _. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry. I love you.”_

 _“It’s okay,”_ Hannah says gently, though her voice is a little strained, like she’s struggling to hold back her tears to sound strong for her daughter. “ _I’m so proud of you, Olivia. I love you._ ”

Liara turns and loops both arms around Garrus. He shifts, holding her, too. Their armor is clunky and awkward, but they’re likely listening to the last words of someone they both deeply love. She wants to believe there’s still hope, still a chance that Olivia can survive this - but as soon as she heard the pain in Olivia’s voice, Liara knew the hope was so slim it might as well not exist. Garrus rests his head on her shoulder, and Liara tugs him a little closer. 

_“If you have to see your dad and Mark - I understand. It’s okay. Tell them I said hi.”_

_“I will,”_ Olivia promises through her tears. _“Are Liara and Garrus still there?”_

“I’m here, Liv,” Liara says. 

Garrus lifts his head and takes several deep breaths, settling himself so he doesn’t sound so sad and stricken to her. “So am I.”

 _“I found a panel,”_ she says. _“I don’t know what it does, but it’s the only one active.”_ She pauses, a hitch in her breath. _“I’m scared,”_ she admits.

Hannah takes a soft breath. _“Good air in, bad air out.”_

 _“Kinda running out of good air up here,_ ” she coughs. 

_“Then push some buttons and come home. Plenty of good air here.”_

Half a laugh through the wheezing and crying. _“Yeah. I love all three of you so much. So much.”_

 _“I love you, kid.”_ Hannah’s voice breaks on _kid._

“Shepard…” Garrus stops. “Olivia. I love you,” he says, subvocals steadier than they were a moment ago. He tightens his arm around Liara’s back. 

“I love you, Liv.” Liara sniffles. “But if you don’t touch that panel right now - I do not know how, but I _will_ make a bucket of ice water appear above your head.”

Olivia laughs, and it sounds a ragged, rattled. _“I’m going,”_ she promises, and they all listen to the awful, painful noises of Olivia limping and dragging herself across the floor. “ _Someone needs to feed my fish. And Hipparchus.”_

“You got it, Shepard,” Garrus promises. 

_“I don’t - I don’t know what this does. So if -”_

And then nothing. Not static, but silence. 

After a few moments, Liara pulls her arm away from Garrus and checks the commlink. SHEPARD, OLIVIA blinks once, twice, and then [OFFLINE] appears next to her name. “She’s off comms,” she says quietly, breaking the silence. She taps at the interface. “I can’t find her to get her back.”

 _“You two take care of each other,”_ Hannah says. _“She’ll want you both in one piece.”_

“Take care of _yourself_ , Hannah. She needs you in one piece, too,” Liara says. 

_“I love you both,”_ Hannah says, before signing off. 

Both Garrus and Liara take shaky, deep breaths. Garrus slides off the table and pulls Liara into a tight hug. They stand there in the silent and still medbay, quietly holding each other while SHEPARD, OLIVIA [OFFLINE] slowly blinks in the dim emergency lighting, even through the alarm klaxons and panel explosions. 

Even as the _Normandy_ flies at top speed out of the Sol system, racing an energy wave and leaving Olivia behind.


	2. Chapter 2

Garrus sits down in the mess opposite Ashley, datapad in hand. 

"I don’t want to hear it," she grumbles. She looks at him, deep hollows under her eyes, and sips at her coffee. After a moment, she sighs, pushes her hair out of her face, and gestures for him to go ahead. 

"Long-range communication, FTL drive, stealth drive, and the main guns are all offline. They’re not…" he grasps for the colorful phrase James used, and comes up empty, "completely destroyed, but they took significant damage."

Ashley frowns. "And we have negative repair supplies." She sighs heavily. "What else?"

Garrus scrolls through his list. "Daniels and Donnelly have been working nonstop on EDI, but they said it’s like her program is just _gone_. There are also multiple severe hull breaches." At her raised eyebrow, he explains, "From crashing into a pile of rocks." 

Ashley nods and covers a yawn. "Oh, right."

"Slightly less destroyed:" he continues onto the next section. "Sublight engines are offline, but Tali and Adams think they’re salvageable with enough time and effort. Liara thinks navigation would probably work if we could figure out where we are," _and we sure could use Shepard for that,_ he adds silently. "Short-range communication is twitchy at best, and Traynor’s exact words were ‘my toothbrush has more reliable reception.’ She had a similar opinion about our long- and short-range scanners."

She stares at him over her coffee cup. "What _is_ working?"

"Life support." That’s it. Ten days of diagnostics and emergency triage repairs, and the only thing they’ve managed to get working is life support. And they crashed on a planet with breathable air and drinkable water. 

"Well, at least there’s that." She takes another sip of coffee. 

"And other minor systems with varying degrees of functionality." He may not be a very good turian, and he may technically be nowhere near her chain of command, but Garrus knows how to give a complete report to his ship’s CO.

Ashley exhales slowly and closes her eyes for a moment. "How are you?" she asks quietly. 

Garrus stills. They’re all feeling Shepard’s absence, and he doesn’t want to claim more grief than anyone else. But since he kept her name off the memorial board, refusing to consider her another casualty, he’s noticed most of the crew going to great lengths to avoid speaking even her name around him. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t appreciate it.

He suspects Ashley put him in charge of overseeing repairs for more than just his ability to give a report. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t appreciate that, too. For most of the day, he can throw his focus and efforts into other problems, tangible problems. Problems that are largely - ah, _shattered to shit_ , that’s the phrase, but problems that can be solved. 

It’s only the few hours before sleep, when he’s alone in their quarters with nothing to distract him, that despair tugs at the edges of his mind. He tried simply going to bed earlier, but that was worse - lying awake in their bed alone, as her scent on her pillow disappears a little more each day. 

He’s taken to working his way through her extensive media library. And sleeping on the couch. 

"The fish didn’t survive the impact," Garrus says, instead of voicing just how much it hurts to not have her here. "But her hamster’s still alive." The little guy has even started coming out of his box to sniff at his fingers when he feeds him.

Ashley nods, and takes his words as a valid answer. She reaches over the table and plucks the datapad from his hand, and scrolls through it for herself. "Let’s talk repair schedule."

***

Thunder booms overhead and Hannah freezes. She hasn’t heard real thunder in, god, twenty years. She’s been rained on since, sure, but never with thunder and -

 _Lightning_. She closes her eyes. 

_Good air in, bad air out. You’re in London_. Gripping the edge of the sink until her hands hurt and her knuckles are stark white, she takes slow, even breaths to bring herself back from a cornfield twenty years ago. 

Zaeed rests his hand on her hip and she opens her eyes. She stares at their reflection in the kitchen window and tries not to see ships and slavers in the clouds outside. She leans back against him as thunder crashes again, loud enough that she feels it in her chest.

"You alright?"

Her reflected self nods, but her real self answers, "No." It’s a good answer, an honest answer. They’re both too old and been through too much crap to lie when memories creep up from where they’ve buried them deep.

He shifts, settling his arms around her waist, and brushes a kiss to her cheek. "Anything I can do?"

 _Find my daughter_ , she wants to say _. Go outside in the storm and dig and dig and don’t stop until you find her_. But Zaeed’s spent every day digging, alongside Wrex and Grunt and the others. She shakes her head, and links her fingers with Zaeed’s. "No," she says again.

Zaeed gently tugs her away from the window and the storm, and toward the living room. She curls into the corner of the couch, hugging a throw pillow to her chest, as Zaeed messes with the entertainment system. They at least have power tonight, and the former residents of the apartment they’re squatting in have no shortage of television and vids they can watch. 

He picks something innocuous, an old Earth black and white comedy that hasn’t aged particularly well but is decent background noise, and joins her on the couch. Hannah leans into him as the storm rages on outside and a 1950s nuclear family with sparkling wide smiles appears on the screen. Zaeed is warm and solid, and she’s felt unstable for nearly three weeks - like a sheet of paper in the storm outside, tossed around and battered, blown from one feeling to the next. 

She’s alive and Zaeed’s alive and the reapers are dead. Dead and gone, save for the hulking, looming shells of their destroyers and capital ships casting long dark shadows when the sun chooses to come out. 

But Olivia is missing. Hannah knows the Alliance has listed _missing in action; presumed dead_ in her daughter’s record. And though she isn’t quite so quick to believe the worst, Hannah finds herself unwillingly moving just a little bit closer to the same conclusion with each passing day.

Zaeed presses a kiss to her temple, and Hannah sighs, trying to focus on the show. She can’t, the storm is too loud and her daughter is too missing, and so instead she curls into Zaeed and rests her head on his chest. She lets her eyes drift shut as he gently strokes his fingers across her back. 

Five days later, in a rare rain-less day, Zaeed and Wrex lift a broken piece of wall in the Citadel cleanup site. They heave it into the omnigel conversion unit beside them, and bend down to lift the next piece. 

Both men freeze when they see a piece of armor, with a bright purple stripe smudged with dirt and blood and oil. Zaeed kneels and wipes away a smear of mud with his thumb. 

N7. 

Zaeed’s stomach drops.

He looks up at Wrex, and sees his worry reflected back in the krogan’s beady red eyes. " _Dig_ ," he orders, and radios for more krogan and a biotic assist squad. 

Hannah makes three wrong turns in the hospital before finally finding the correct ward. Zaeed’s sitting on the floor halfway down the hall, opposite Wrex, who’s leaning against the wall beside Jack and Grunt. Zaeed stands as Hannah stills, unable to walk any further for what the news might be. 

Nodding, Zaeed walks toward her. Hannah wraps her arms around herself and bites the inside of her cheek as Zaeed and the others blur through sudden tears.

Everything stops, except for Hannah’s loud, pounding heartbeat, and Zaeed in front of her in his muddy armor. It probably only takes him three seconds to reach her, but it feels like an excruciating eternity. 

"She’s alive, Hannah," he says. 

The universe crashes into motion again so fast that Hannah loses her balance. Zaeed wraps his arms around her, holding her up as Miranda sprints past them. 

***

Liara opens the battery door to a bang and a clatter, and an audible growl from somewhere deep in the gun’s inner workings. _Filed under: things that don’t bode well_ , she hears in Olivia’s voice. She wishes Olivia would stop that. They’re all going a bit mad stuck on this planet, and she’d prefer that her insanity look a little more like Sam’s, working forty-eight straight hours on a quirky subroutine, or Ashley’s, trying to glare a hull breach into submission.

Instead, Liara has her best friend in her head. At least she hasn’t started seeing her. Or having conversations. _Could be worse!_ Liara rolls her eyes. 

Sighing, Liara takes a tentative step into the battery. "Garrus?" The doors close behind her. 

Another angry growl, this time accompanied by the distinctive sound of someone punching the uncooperative technology and putting their whole weight behind it.

"Did you lose the coin toss?" he says tersely, subharmonics still growling. 

Technically, she volunteered because the others were too scared to toss a coin in case they _lost_ , but Liara suspects he knows that. Garrus has always been fairly self-aware; he can’t be oblivious to the way he’s retreated into the battery (and himself) and stopped talking to everyone over the past two weeks. He also can’t be oblivious to how unhealthy that is. 

Then again, Liara surmises, he responded to Olivia dying by quitting his job, leaving his life and friends behind without so much as an email, and running off to Omega to become a vigilante for two years. And that was before he fell in love with her.

_Not like you’re one to talk, Miss Spent Her Life Savings Excavating My Dead Body From A Glacier._

Liara huffs. "Something like that," she says. "You missed dinner." She steps around a column and finds him tucked uncomfortably into a corner, arm threaded through an access panel as he blindly tries to fix something out of sight. 

"I’m not hungry," he says. There’s a shower of sparks, a low rising hum of something trying to activate, and then a falling hum as it fails. "Damn." He pulls his arm back and shakes out his hand.

Liara huffs. "I don’t care," she snaps. "Eat something."

Garrus swings his attention around, and locks his piercing stare onto her. "Interesting pep talk," he says, though he takes the offered ration bar.

Crossing her arms, Liara leans against the bulkhead. "I’m not here to give you a pep talk," she says. "I am trying to make sure my best friend’s boyfriend doesn’t die out of sheer stupidity."

_I appreciate that._

Her words seem to deflate him a little bit, and he slowly nibbles at his dinner. He finishes the bar in silence while Liara fidgets nervously. She didn’t come here to yell at him about eating - she actually came in to bring him dinner and tell him the good news about navigation. The whole crew is on edge, growing slightly more restless and irritable with each day they spend trapped on this planet. She thought she’d been doing a good job of not joining them. 

"I’m sorry," she says softly as he crumples up the wrapper and tosses it into a bin beside scrap metal and wire. "I did not mean to yell." 

Garrus nods and rubs the back of his neck. "Thanks for the food," he says, in a gentler tone than Liara’s heard from him in a week. 

"I discovered where we are," she says. A terrible pop song from ten years ago provided the key, oddly enough; Olivia listened to nearly nonstop the semester she wrote a paper on the nearby supernova, and it triggered something in Liara’s memory. "As soon as the FTL drive is back online, we can start back to Earth." They don’t have a navigator on board - yet another reason to miss Olivia - and by her estimations, it will take five months. Provided they don’t run into trouble.

 _Always expect trouble_. 

Six months, then.

"Good," he says tightly, and turns back to his panel.

Liara takes a deep breath, and reminds herself that he’s grieving, just like she is. Their grief just looks different. She nods. "I’ll leave you to it."

"Fiancée," he says quietly as she turns away.

Liara pauses and turns back. She tilts her head, curious.

Garrus sighs and looks down for a moment. "I asked her to marry me. We, uh, we weren’t going to tell anyone until…after."

“Garrus!” Liara gasps quietly, part in surprise, but mostly in excitement. Genuine joy rises in her for the first time in months. It feels a little strange, unfamiliar, like a friend she hasn’t spoken to in a long time. 

His mandibles flutter in an approximation of a smile. “I’m surprised you didn’t know.”

Whether that’s a reference to being the Shadow Broker, or her friendship with Olivia, Liara isn’t sure. She presses her lips together. “I do sometimes keep my nose to myself.” When she doesn’t see quite the same joy in his face she would expect, she sighs. “You know she will fight like hell to get back to you.”

He takes a slightly shaky breath, and his mandibles tighten. "Yeah."

Liara knows that they’re both remembering Olivia’s voice at the Crucible, and how broken and hurt she sounded. Whether Olivia is _able_ to fight or not - Liara slams down that thought. "She _will_ , Garrus." 

***

The _Normandy_ lifts off the day Olivia gets discharged from the hospital. 

***

The skycar pulls up in front of their newly-built prefab, one of many slowly starting to replace the refugee camps, and Hannah peers out the window. They were tailed by a newscar almost the whole way here, but they lost them two turns ago. Their street has been surprisingly - and thankfully - empty. Either the media has more respect than she thought, or Wrex and his krogan set up a perimeter. She’d bet not an insignificant amount of money on the latter, especially when she sees Jack and Kasumi sitting outside the prefab next door, trying to look like they’re lounging casually on the porch. 

Hannah doesn’t think Domestic Casual suits either one of them, but she appreciates their presence, and not just because she’s sure Jack’s hiding a shotgun somewhere. Miranda moved in with the two women once Olivia was stable enough to not need her immediately nearby. A Major Kirrahe lives across the street; Hannah doesn’t know what role he played in her daughter’s life, but he seems quiet and nice, if also about as likely to kill you as he is to feed you. Their whole block is filled with Olivia’s friends and crew, the ones who were stranded here, and Hannah thinks it’s kind of nice. Insular. Let Olivia start to navigate her life again amongst friends. 

That Olivia has hardly spoken at all since she woke up is a problem for tomorrow.

"You ready?"

Olivia nods, but she doesn’t look sure of herself at all. Three weeks under a pile of rubble, kept alive only by the remains of her hardsuit, and then a month and a half in the hospital - the hollows under her eyes haven’t gotten any lighter. Hannah sets her hand on Olivia’s shoulder and offers her a soft smile, then tilts her head in the direction of the prefab. They’ve put a piece of metal over the front stair to make it easier for her.

Gathering up Olivia’s bag, Hannah opens the door. She stands up, and then takes Olivia’s crutches, holding them out for her.

Olivia slides to the edge of the seat. Grimacing, she takes the crutches and braces them under her arms. With a deep breath, she checks that her balance is right, and stands. Hannah shuts the door and follows Olivia down the small path to the prefab.

Keeping her stare forward, Olivia walks uncertainly on crutches and one leg. Her jaw clenches as Kasumi calls after her - _hey Shep!_ \- and she pauses, offering her friend a forced, tight smile and a wave of her fingers. 

The skycar powers up with a loud whine, and Olivia flinches as it drives away. It’s only a tightening of her eyes, but to Hannah the flinch shines like a beacon on her normally-unflappable daughter. Olivia’s breath grows shallower and speeds up. She closes her eyes, and visibly forces herself to count to ten. Her arms, and the crutches, start to shake.

"Let’s get you inside," Hannah says softly.

Nodding, Olivia opens her eyes and continues on, making her way up the impromptu ramp.

Zaeed’s leaning nonchalantly against the open door, but Hannah knows better - he has at least three guns on him, and could draw and shoot to kill before his target even blinked. He smiles warmly at Olivia as she passes, and Olivia manages a weak, but genuine, smile in return. 

"How is she?" he asks quietly, shutting the door behind them. 

Hannah exhales and watches Olivia make her slow way to the couch, and carefully, awkwardly, sit down. "I have no idea," she says, just as quiet.

***

She sits in therapy, silent.

Her therapist is nice enough, and comes with a stack of degrees and the highest Alliance security clearance. 

But she seems intent on making Olivia _talk_. And in lieu of her volunteering anything, the therapist spends their sessions reaching for topics. 

Mostly, she asks about the leg. 

The prosthetic has been fitted and connected and attached now, but it’s still adjusting. Olivia refuses to call it "calibrating," though that’s really what it is; too many memories about that word. She still needs the crutches. 

Olivia isn’t defiant toward the idea of therapy - she knows she needs a heavy dose of it, and probably for at least the next three years. But speaking is too much, too loud. There’s too much to say, and it’s all too big to let out in little pieces. And while her therapist is nice enough and qualified enough and has enough security clearance, Olivia isn’t about to open the dam and let everything flood out to a relative stranger.

So she sits silently in her therapist’s office with its fake-cheery paintings and fake potted plants not doing much at all to disguise that the office itself is a sectioned-off corner of a bombed-out parking garage. Olivia lets her ask about her missing leg, and gives one-word answers, sometimes two if she’s feeling charitable. 

_At least I got to say goodbye_ , she thinks, as the calendar changes from August to September to October, with still no word from the _Normandy_. She likes to think of herself as an optimist, but optimism is in short supply when she can’t sleep, can barely walk, is missing her fiancée and best friend so much it physically hurts some days, and has nothing to do except think about all of it.

She gives up on therapy entirely in November. November is also when Miranda gives her the okay to stop using crutches full-time. _There’s no metaphor in that,_ Olivia says from the door as she tells her therapist she’s quitting for now. _Just coincidence_.

It’s the most words she’s said in a single session.

Two nights later, Zaeed gets up for a glass of water and finds her on the couch, head buried in her hands. He silently sits beside her, and she tells him everything. 

From the Illusive Man and Anderson, to her mom and Garrus and Liara, to that stupid hologram and its choices, to destroying the reapers (to laughing around a collapsed lung and broken ribs at the thought that she would choose any other solution), to knowing it meant the geth and EDI and the mass relays too, to accepting the idea that she was going to die. 

To waking up and finding that she hadn’t, but that she was missing a few parts. Literally and figuratively. 

Olivia tells him everything in a hushed whisper by cloudy moonlight, and lets him pull her in for a hug. 

_I think I’m going to cry_ , she warns him after a while. 

He rubs a hand across her back. _You’ve earned it_ , he says, and holds her as she quietly cries herself to sleep. 

***

Garrus finds Tali in the tiny corner of engineering she claimed as her own, the same corner Jack slept in. She’s packing. She doesn’t have much to pack, but it’s clear she’s taking as long as she can with the bag.

"You sure about leaving?" he asks, leaning against the wall. They rendezvous with the quarian ship in twelve hours. It’s a miracle they even found each other, passing through a nebula with malfunctioning scanners on both ships.

Tali sits back on her heels. "Yes, I should be with the Fleet. Besides, the engines are stable now. All I’m doing is eating your food, Garrus."

He sighs and sits down on the stripped bedframe. The quarians have an extra box of rations they’re willing to part with in exchange for some spare power coils, and Tali leaving doubles the length his food will last. But she’s the only other person who’s been here for it all - for Saren, for the Collectors, for the reapers. Tali’s who he went to for advice when he realized he had feelings for Olivia, the one who smartly told him to either tell her how he felt, or stop sleeping with her. 

She’s also the only one who can successfully yell at him into leaving his quarters these days. Not even Liara can drag him out, but Tali has a _tone_. 

The gun’s been online for a month, he doesn’t know anything about the _Normandy_ ’s long-range communication systems (and he suspects Traynor would kick him out within five minutes of trying to help anyway), and everything else is working. Garrus has _nothing_ to do. It’s hard not to isolate himself and succumb to grief. The quarians aren’t the first ship they’ve come across, and no one has any news from Earth.

"I don’t mind sharing," he offers lightly.

Tali turns to him and tilts her head. He still can’t see through her mask, but he knows that tilt. It’s the _you’re being an idiot_ tilt. He’s seen it a lot over the past five years. 

"Yeah," he sighs and looks up at the crossbeams and wire grating above them.

She closes her bag and then sits beside him. 

For one horrible moment, he thinks she’s going to say something comforting. That she’s going to tell him not to worry, that Shepard’s alive, that if anyone could beat death a second time, it’s Shepard.

"I’m transferring my Monopoly property to you," Tali says instead. "If you let Vega beat you, I will take it as a personal insult."

Garrus laughs. It sounds a little desperate, a little unhinged, but still - it’s a laugh. That game has continued for three weeks, and showed no signs of coming to an end when he last checked. "You got it," he promises.

***

"I’m worried about her," Hannah says, a few days after Christmas. She rolls over onto her back and stares up at the ceiling in the dark. She’s been worried about Olivia for months now, but she thought it would subside, thought  Olivia would get better, like she always does. Mindoir, her N4 mission, even dying - Olivia’s always gotten better. 

But she’s just been silent for six months. She hasn’t been rude or cold. She’s still been Olivia, only a quiet, reserved version of herself. Almost like she’ll break if she speaks too loudly. 

_Haunted._

Zaeed turns onto his side and trails his fingers down her arm. He looks across the room. Hannah looks over her shoulder and follows his gaze to the window and the snow falling softly outside. She smiles - been a long time since she’s had snow. Her smile is short-lived, however, and she sighs, turning back to him. 

"I don’t know what to do," she admits softly.

"Give her time," he says. "She’s been through a lot."

"I know," Hannah huffs out a breath of air. She doesn’t know what that _a lot_ entails, though she has a suspicion Zaeed does. She’s trying not to let that upset her, and remind herself that Zaeed’s a soldier who’s been through his own share of shit and is the better person for Olivia to talk to. But it hurts a little anyway; Olivia’s always told her everything. "I’m her _mother_ ," she says. "I ought to be able to do _something_."

It hasn’t been for lack of trying. From silent support to warm hugs, to promising an ear if she wants to talk, to chocolate chip cookies, she’s done everything she can think of. It hardly seems to have any effect. Hannah exhales sharply. She doesn’t know what else she can do for Olivia. Though it may be her only option, _time_ is a frustrating outlook.

Zaeed reaches out and gently tugs her toward him. She comes willingly and tucks herself up against him, digging a little deeper under the warm covers as she rests her forehead against his shoulder. Zaeed presses a kiss to the top of her head and lightly brushes a hand down her spine. 

"Thanks for taking care of her," she says after a while. Zaeed’s spent the past few nights up with Olivia, calming her after paralyzing nightmares. Hannah tried to help, but Olivia wouldn’t let her. That had hurt, and it took a midnight walk around the block to calm herself down, and remind herself that this is about Olivia, not her.

"Of course," he says, holding her a little tighter.

Hannah buries her head in the crook of his shoulder. Zaeed’s rough as sandpaper around the edges, but there’s a warmth inside of him, a kindness, though he tries so hard to hide it from the world. She counts herself lucky he’s chosen her to show that warmth to. She counts Olivia lucky, too. 

“There’s a crack in everything,” he whispers, long after she thinks he’s fallen asleep.

She makes a small, curious noise in the back of her throat. 

"That’s how the light gets in." 

Hannah blinks. It’s a strangely-optimistic phrase coming from Zaeed, even poetic. Then again, a man who was shot point blank in the eye _would_ know a few things about hope, not just revenge.

December ends, and the new year rings in with fireworks that start soon after dark. Olivia puts in earplugs, takes a sleeping pill, and quietly goes to bed early.

But the next morning, Hannah wakes to the smell of coffee and baking bread. She slides out of bed, whispering for Zaeed to go back to sleep when he protests her leaving, and gets dressed by the dull grey dawnlight. 

She stands in the kitchen doorway for a few minutes, silently watching Olivia knead another loaf as the sun brightens in the window. Olivia actually looks calm as she works the dough, lifting up on her toes to really put her strength into it. Hannah walks in, careful to make enough noise that she doesn’t surprise her.

"Morning," she says, stepping up beside her.

"Morning," Olivia responds quietly, scattering some flour over the counter. Her voice sounds stronger than it has recently, even for just one simple word. 

Hannah sets her palm between Olivia’s shoulders, gently rubbing her back. Her daughter’s ghosts aren’t banished forever, just blissfully absent for now. "I love you," she whispers, and presses a kiss to Olivia’s cheek.

Olivia pauses in her work and leans into Hannah’s embrace. Her breath shakes a little, but she manages a smile. "I love you, too."

***

Liara grimaces as Dr. Chakwas rotates her arm. "There," she says, as the rotation hits just the right spot, and something inside of her shoulder twinges painfully.

Chakwas sighs and lowers Liara’s arm back to her side. "Is there a reason you waited five months to tell me about this?" She steps over to her cabinet, and prepares an injection spray.

The charging brute seems half a lifetime ago, not just five months. The pain of missing Olivia, though it isn’t a physical one, eclipses everything else. She feels her best friend’s absence when she’s working, when she’s eating, when she’s watching the Monopoly game spiral out of control as Ashley raises the rent on all of her properties and James acquires the last railroad. The Olivia-shaped hole in her life has become such a constant dull ache that she sometimes doesn’t even notice it. It’s part of her now.

But her shoulder has started hurting in her sleep. Sleep is rare enough without waking in the middle of the night unable to move for the burning pain. The doctor’s question is a rhetorical one, and so Liara doesn’t answer, merely removes the Serrice University sweatshirt of Olivia’s she stole during the hunt for Saren; she sits in a tank top, offering her shoulder. The needle goes in sharp but smooth.

"This will help with the pain for now," Chakwas says, "and hopefully relax your tendons. Give it three days, and if it doesn’t improve, _tell me_." The disapproval in her voice in the last two words is nearly palpable.

Liara nods and pulls the sweatshirt back on. "Thank you," she says, and hops off the exam table.

She holds her breath as she passes the crowded mess - Risk tonight, and a showdown between Traynor and Daniels that’s bound to win someone a lot of money - but no one calls to her. As much as she scolds Garrus for isolating himself, she knows she’s doing the same thing. It’s hard to be excited, even for a few hours about a board game. 

There was at least something to _do_ last time. She had a goal, a singular focus, a way to _fix it_. Now she’s just stuck waiting out the journey.

_Not sure going on a crusade to find my dead body really counts as a healthy reaction._

"I never claimed it was healthy," Liara says out loud, once the doors are shut behind her and the chatter from the game blissfully silences. "And she who considers ‘more coffee’ to be a valid solution to every problem should not judge."

_Name one time that has failed._

Liara thinks back on the fifteen years of their friendship and tries to remember even a single scenario where that plan has not succeeded. She finds none. "Fine," she grumbles. "You win." She sits on the edge of her bed and rests her elbows on her knees, burying her head in her hands. The silence and solitude are overwhelming, but so is the idea of leaving her quarters to watch Traynor and Daniels roll dice in battle over long-redrawn territory. 

_Super healthy, T’Soni._

"What do you want me to do, Olivia?"

_I’m not really here, you know. You’re holding both sides of this conversation. With yourself._

With a heavy sigh, she flops backward onto the bed. "I know." She closes her eyes and throws an arm over her face. "I miss you," she says quietly.

_Is this where I get to give you the "get up off the floor" speech? Out of bed. Whatever._

Liara drops her arm and opens her eyes. She’s being yelled at by herself in her best friend’s voice. This must be what going properly insane feels like. "Fine," she grumbles again. She sits up carefully, accustomed to her shoulder twitching painfully, but this time it doesn’t. 

_Should’ve gone to the doctor a while ago._

Liara simply stares directly into the empty space in front of her, as if Olivia were standing there. "I am not even going to acknowledge that," she says, and stands up. 

Long-range communications are still down, and even if they weren’t, there is no chance the _Normandy_ is within range of an Alliance comm buoy yet. Opening their private channel seems prematurely optimistic, but Liara does it anyway. Even if she can’t broadcast, and even if no one is there to receive, it’s open and ready.

"No comment on that?" she asks the empty room.

Liara doesn’t expect a response, but she’s a little disappointed anyway when one doesn’t come.  

***

January passes with a promotion. It’s ceremonial: her active days are over.

There are plenty of active soldiers with prosthetics, but she’s done. She’s paid back her degree, the galaxy is saved a couple times over, and she’s done. 

Hackett knows this, but he puts captain’s bars on her shoulders in front of a crowd anyway. She isn’t even too upset that he’s using her for one last media stunt, though she officially resigns three days later. 

"We could still use you, Shepard," he says, leaning back in his chair. "There’s a government to rebuild."

She lets out a harsh breath; in another life, it might have been a laugh. "If you’re thinking about naming me Ambassador or Councilor," she shakes her head. "Admiral -"

She’s ready to tell him, point blank, that she’s done. Out. Finished. Wants to live out the rest of her life so far away from the spotlight she’s sitting in the dark. Doesn’t want anything to do with the rebuilding - she wants a _break_. To be left _alone_. 

But she doesn’t. 

Seven months, and there’s still no word from the _Normandy_. She’s tired of standing still. Of doing nothing. Of lying awake at night, staring at the wall, trying to make a pile of pillows feel remotely like Garrus. Of pretending the next morning that she hadn’t heard through paper-thin walls her mother whispering to Zaeed about how worried she is. Of muffling her cries in a pillow, so those same paper-thin walls don’t give her away. 

She wasn’t made to stand still. She wasn’t built for doing nothing.

"Why don’t you get some use out of that degree you paid for?" Olivia says instead. 

Hackett tilts his head. 

"Someone needs to get those relays back online," she says. "The galaxy’s going to stay a mess until we get transport moving again."

"There’s a team on it," he says, though his tone is factual, rather than dismissive. "Though they haven’t been able to make heads or tails of the relay wreckage, or the schematics we found in the Archives."

A smile tugs at her lips. "I suddenly seem to find myself with an abundance of free time," she says. "And I do have a doctorate in astrophysics and stellar cartography you people haven’t let me use yet."

"And a remarkable ability for making things happen."

"That too." The smile grows. It feels weird. She’s out of practice. 

Hackett sighs and stares out his window at the grey sky. "Are you sure I can’t offer you a political position?"

Olivia snorts. "Not on your life."

Her first act doesn’t have anything to do with relays. Instead, she wrangles a small fleet of FTL shuttles, and begs every ration officer for every extra box they can spare. She orders all the motley N7 teams she can find - humans joined by asari and volus and krogan, turian and quarian and drell, even a few batarians - to pack up the shuttles and fly out. 

"We have a lot of stranded people trying to find their way back home," she says. Home to Palaven, Earth, Thessia, just _home_. "Let’s make sure they don’t starve on the journey."

Her second act doesn’t have anything to do with relays, either. She records a message - _Liara, it’s Liv. If you can hear this, please respond_ \- codes it for their private frequency, and sends it out through the few intact Alliance subspace comm relays.

***

Garrus rubs a hand over his forehead. "Yeah," he murmurs to himself. It was a long shot. "Thank you," he tells the turian commander. "Safe journey."

The turian nods. _"You as well, sir,"_ she says, and salutes him before signing off. 

He sighs heavily and leans on the railing, closing his eyes. He didn’t expect a turian ship way out here, halfway across the galaxy, to have news from Palaven at all, and certainly not news of his family. 

But still. Garrus would like _some_ word about _someone_. 

***

"Breathe," Zaeed tells her as she struggles to do just that.

Olivia rests her elbows on her bent knees and presses the heels of her palms into her forehead. She’s not sure which is worse - the splitting headache, or the nightmare. 

Or that she evidently woke Zaeed up across the hall and through two closed doors. Again.

"I'm trying," she whispers.  

***

He’s starving. 

He’s starving and he’s angry and he’s sad and their bed has long stopped smelling like her. There’s nothing he can do about any of it, and he’s furious. Too much pent up energy and nowhere for it to go, no way to get it out. He’s too weak to spar with Vega, too jittery to tinker with anything, too irritable to even think about joining a game. Staying up here alone isn’t doing him any favors, he knows, but being around others sets his teeth on edge. 

Writing to her hasn’t helped. Garrus has watched his handwriting get steadily worse over the past weeks as constant hunger set in and his hands started to shake. But he keeps writing letters, every day. He’s not sure it kept him quite _sane_ last time, but it certainly kept him from catapulting over the edge. 

He feeds Hipparchus - at least the little guy will make it back to Earth alive, at least he can manage to keep _one_ promise to her - and sits down to enjoy the last quarter of his ration bar. He even licks the wrapper. There are two left. Eight days, and he’s completely out of food. Even with Tali gone, even with cutting down so much it hardly seems worth eating at all, he’s still running out. He adores Tali, but he’s glad she left - he can’t imagine how bad it would be if they were still sharing. At least this way, he’ll be a few thousand light years closer to Earth before he’s running completely on empty. 

_Olivia_ , he writes, after eating that quarter of a bar as slowly as he possibly could. 

Garrus stares at the blank rest of the page. Though the human pen is weird in his hand, he’s long learned how to write with it. But his hand won’t stop shaking long enough to write anything more than her name. 

He snaps. 

With an angry roar, he flips the table, expending energy he knows he doesn’t have. He hurls the chair into the wall and watches as it splinters. 

He blinks at it, and the destruction suddenly feels devastating. They bought the little table and chairs so they could eat dinner and feel like normal people for a few hours, even if dinner was a just-add-water microwaved tasteless ration packet. They had to collapse everything afterward and stick it in the closet so they’d have enough room to move, but for those few hours they were just Olivia and Garrus, girlfriend and boyfriend sharing a meal. 

Gingerly, he rights the table. One of the legs is bent now, and the table wobbles. He sighs, blinking away his rising emotions, and picks up the pieces of the chair, placing them out of the way under the desk. He’ll recycle them into omnigel later, maybe someone can turn them into a power coil or plasma conduit.

He bends over and picks up the notebook, but the pen is nowhere to be found. Garrus crawls on his hands and knees, searching the floor for the pen - _her_ pen. It’s probably only two minutes, but it feels like he searches for an hour. He can’t find it, it’s like it disappeared into thin air, and he’s nearly about to just give in and let himself finally fall apart completely, all over a missing pen.

But he catches sight of something underneath the couch.

Garrus lies as flat as he can and blindly reaches under the couch. His hand clasps around the pen, but his fingers also catch on something soft, something fuzzy. Frowning, his triumph over finding the pen is short-lived and replaced by confusion; he grabs the soft thing along with the pen and sits up. 

It’s Olivia’s teddy bear. Saved from Mindoir, kept safe in her bedroom at Hannah’s for most of her military career, brought to the _Normandy_ only after the reapers attacked Earth. The teddy bear mostly stayed on the couch, but there were nights when she slid out of bed to retrieve it, and crawled back into bed beside him, holding it nearly as tight as he was holding her. 

Garrus carefully brushes some dust off of its nose; he moves to set it back on the couch, when he takes a breath and gasps. The bear still somehow smells like her; it smells like the warm, fruity lotion she ran out of just before they assaulted Cronos Station. He crushes the bear to his chest, mindful of its soft fabric and his sharp edges, buries his nose between its ears and just _breathes._

Several minutes pass, and he slowly feels himself step back from the edge and calm down. He stands up off the floor, fighting a wave of starvation-induced vertigo that is only going to get worse, collects the pen and notebook, and sits down on the bed. He sets the bear beside him, right in the middle against one of her pillows, and opens back up to his letter. 

_I didn’t stand in front of a reaper just to die of starvation on the way back to you_ , he writes. 

***

Olivia stares out the window of her office - a repurposed single-occupancy room on the first floor of the hotel the Alliance took over for headquarters. The February rain and fog obscure her view, transforming everything into grey and blue smears, occasionally broken by a moving accent of bright color as someone with a cheery umbrella walks down the street. 

Her team has mostly moved past their starstruck initial reaction at being led by _Captain Shepard_ , and moved into vague resentment: she’s forcing them to actually _do_ things instead of sit around and _talk_ about the science all day. Talking about the science and the theory is all well and good, when you don’t have a whole galaxy depending upon you to get everyone home. 

Funny how they got the Charon Relay up and running within four weeks of that meeting. Unfortunately, one active relay doesn’t do anyone any good - it needs a connection point. 

Palaven was the logical choice, though for a while she had a revolving door of asari and salarians arguing that their relays were more important. But communication with Palaven has been unreliable at best; short of sending a scout shuttle, decent intelligence on the Trebia relay is nigh impossible to find. She’s about to give up and switch her efforts to the Aralakh relay. The only reason she hasn’t already is that same revolving door of asari and salarians - though Victus has said he’d support her decision, she’s sure she can add turians to the metaphorical line outside her office.

So much for not taking a political position. 

February also marks a return to therapy.  

"I hear reapers," Olivia says abruptly in the middle of a paragraph-long tirade about politicians, during their third session.

Her therapist tilts her head, and takes a moment to catch up. "How often?"

She holds the woman’s gaze long enough and hard enough that it becomes a stare. "Always." Inhaling sharply, she continues. "Also geth. And sometimes Cerberus." She shudders; the Collectors have their moments as well, though usually because there’s a fly in the house. 

The woman nods. "That’s normal in veterans," she says, "to hear your enemies even though you’re safe."

Olivia blinks at her. "You’re telling me it’s normal for me to think every heavy truck that passes my house is a brute. That my mother’s omnitool beep is a cloaked geth hunter, that my own growling stomach is a husk. It’s normal for me to hear a bunch of kids playing and hear a banshee instead. It’s totally normal that in utter dead silence before I fall asleep I hear _get to cover_ and _drone deployed._ That’s normal." It certainly doesn’t _sound_ normal. 

"Yes. It’s very common in individuals with combat PTSD." 

Olivia quirks an eyebrow.

She smiles kindly. "I read your file. I diagnosed you in our first session, in August."

Olivia returns the smile, but just a little bit fake. "I diagnosed myself during the war," she says. "You have some catching up to do." It comes out harsher than she intended, and Olivia holds an apology at the tip of her tongue.

"I imagine I do," she says. "Do you want to talk about hearing reapers, or do you want to talk about Garrus?"

Olivia goes still. She wants to lash out and scream at the woman for even bringing him up - Olivia well knows the implication behind her words: _it’s probably time to face that he may not be coming back_. But some rational part deep inside of her takes over, and convinces her to take a deep breath, and to focus on the real problem. Hearing reapers and missing Garrus _are_ real problems, but she can tolerate the former and can’t do a damn thing about the latter. 

"The night terrors have started breaking through my sleeping pills," she whispers. Zaeed’s okay enough at walking her back from them, and she’s getting an enormous amount of work done in the hours before sunrise. But it’s the same one she had during the war; only this time, she isn’t chasing a child.

She’s chasing Liara. And when she finally catches up with her, Liara isn’t Liara anymore. She’s twisted and stretched and torn, emaciated. Her mouth curls over sharp teeth and she turns, stalking Olivia like prey. 

And Liara _screams_.

Small wonder she’s been able to sleep at all.

When Olivia gets home that night, exhausted and raw from reliving that particular nightmare for the better part of two hours, she makes polite conversation over dinner and then retreats into her bedroom. She kicks off her shoes and changes into comfy pajama pants and a t-shirt, turns off all the lights save for the strands of fairy lights Kasumi found for her, and sits in the middle of her bed.

Her omnitool glows faint orange as she pulls up her active comm channels. Her message to Liara is still going strong, still repeating. It’s even managed to travel a little further over the past month, as teams slowly repair the comm buoys.

“Please be out there,” she whispers. “Both of you.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _that's how the light gets in_

_Liara, it’s Liv. If you can hear this, please respond_. 

Liara _mmph_ s in protest and turns over onto her stomach. 

_Liara, it’s Liv. If you can hear this, please respond_. 

"‘‘m asleep," she mumbles. "Go away." Through the haze of sleep, she wonders whether she’s properly lost her mind now - yelling at herself for talking to herself in her best friend’s voice while she’s sleeping. 

Olivia’s words repeat over and over - _Liara, it’s Liv. If you can hear this, please respond. Liara, it’s Liv. If you can hear this, please respond. Liara, it’s Liv. If you can hear this_ \- and Liara gets annoyed enough that she reaches out and slaps at her nightstand, as if trying to silence a particularly-annoying alarm clock. 

Ironic, she thinks as her hand connects with nothing but air, since she’s the one who once dumped a bucket of ice water over a sleeping Olivia’s head. 

_Please respond._

Liara blinks herself awake. Slowly, and as the message continues, she comes to the realization that this isn’t her subconscious showing its cruel side, and this isn’t Olivia in her head just messing with her. It’s an automatic message. A _real_ message. Liara sits up in her darkened room and stares across at her terminal, and the blinking purple light. 

_Liara, it’s Liv. If you can hear this, please respond_. 

She gasps. “Olivia.” She throws the comforter off of her and nearly sprints out of bed. They must finally be within range of a working Alliance short-range comm buoy. The metal deck plating is cold against her bare feet, but she hardly notices it as she activates their comm channel.

"I’m here, Olivia," she says through a rushed breath. No answer. "Olivia, you woke me up. The polite thing to do would be to answer the phone."

There’s a rustle of blankets, and then a groan, followed by a clatter and a muffled _"shit."_ Tears spring to Liara’s eyes as she tries to tamp down a smile at her friend’s expense. She must’ve dropped her omnitool. 

But it means that she’s _alive_. And there aren’t any hospital beeps in the background, so Olivia must also be _okay_. 

_"You woke_ me _up,"_ Olivia teases in return, her voice still thick with sleep, _"the least you could do is not laugh at me."_

Tears spill down Liara’s cheeks. She collapses into her chair, pressing a hand to her mouth. "You’re alive," she sobs in such relief that it _hurts._

 _"Yeah_ , _"_ Olivia whispers. She sniffles, clearly fighting her own tears and failing. _"So are you_. _"_

Gratitude and joy wash over her at hearing Olivia’s voice again. They’ve had no news at all of her and Earth, only bits and pieces from other parts of the galaxy gleaned from passing ships trying to make their own slow way home. But Olivia is alive and talking to her. 

"How are you?" she asks once both their tears are under control. And, oh, what she wouldn’t give to be in the same room as her, to be able to hug her tight and _feel_ that she’s alive. 

_"Better now. How about you?"_

Liara knows her friend well enough to hear in her voice that Olivia desperately _isn’t_ okay. Neither is she, but both things can keep. "Better now," she repeats.

 _"Did everyone…"_ Olivia trails off, as if not wanting to give voice to the words, in case that would make them true. 

"Everyone is okay," Liara says. She knows exactly what Olivia wants to know, and also exactly why she’s so scared to ask. " _Garrus_ is okay," she says. 

Olivia’s deep sigh of relief nearly causes Liara to start crying again. She loves Olivia dearly, and that only makes the rest of the news that much worse. She sniffs, and clenches her teeth together to keep the tears at bay. The truth is that he’s fine - but only for now. 

_"What’s wrong?"_

Liara closes her eyes. "We ran out of dextro rations last week," she says softly. 

Silence, broken only by the rustle of blankets and the soft chime of a laptop turning on. 

"Liv?"

 _"There’s a dextro supply ship in your area. I’m rerouting it to intercept you - it’ll be there day after tomorrow._ " She says the second sentence all in one shaky breath. 

Liara’s brows furrow. Her agents are in disarray, and her channels are mostly scrambled and static, but she has a tap on the _Normandy_ ’s short-range sensors. There wasn’t a ship within two day’s flight when she checked before bed. "How?"

_"Long story, but apparently saving the galaxy wasn’t enough. Now I have to fix it."_

Liara grins. There’s a smile behind Olivia’s words. "The galaxy couldn’t be in better hands."

Olivia snorts. _"Hackett promoted me to Captain. I thanked him by retiring three days later."_ There’s the sound of tapping on a keyboard. _"How are you on levo food?"_

Ashley held that meeting this afternoon, for senior staff only. They’ve been rationing, and though it hasn’t been the same hard rations Garrus went down to, they’re about to have to start. "We could use some." Her six-month estimate was close, but they’ve had to barter for eezo to keep the FTL drive running.

More tapping. _"Okay. That one will be there in three days."_ She pauses, and then there’s an audible smile even though she’s quiet. _"It looks like you’ll be here in two weeks,"_ she says. 

Navigation has still been a little twitchy; she knew they were approaching Earth, but didn’t quite know how close they were. And with food on the way, those two weeks won’t be quite so desperate. Liara smiles softly.

They talk for over an hour. Liara tells Olivia about the _Normandy_ ’s repairs and the Monopoly tournament that Ashley’s poised to win tomorrow night, while Olivia tells her about learning to walk again and rebuilding relays. 

_"Can I…can I talk to Garrus?"_ Olivia asks quietly during a lull in the conversation.

Garrus’ mental state hasn’t been the greatest the past few months, and it hasn’t been helped by how far he had to cut down on rations to make them last as long as they did. She’s taken to just giving him space, and checking in on him over ship’s comms a few times a day. Liara suspects that hearing Olivia’s voice will do wonders for him, maybe even start to lift him out of the depression that’s settled over him.

"Of course," Liara says. She looks at the clock, and then stands. "He’s probably asleep, let me get him."

***

Garrus hasn’t slept solidly through the night since Chakwas stopped giving him the good painkillers months ago. The quiet knocking intrudes on the fuzzy border between sleep and awake. He opens his eyes. The knocking continues.

Sighing, he gingerly gets out of bed and opens the door, ignoring how weak and shaky he felt just walking across the room. "Liara," he says, blinking in the light of the hall. 

Her eyes cast downward, to his hand, and he realizes he’s carrying Olivia’s teddy bear. A younger version of himself \- one not quite so tired, one not quite so hungry, and one not quite so in love with a woman who is probably dead - would try to hide the bear behind his back. Garrus merely curls his talons around it. 

His eyes finally focus enough to clearly see Liara as she stands in front of him. She’s barefoot and in her pajamas, with tear-stained cheeks, but she’s smiling. He blinks at her. There are two reasons she’d wake him up in the middle of the night like this, and both of them involve Olivia. 

50-50 chance, though she probably wouldn’t be smiling for one of those. Garrus takes a deep breath and holds it.  

"I have someone who _really_ wants to talk to you," Liara says, smile widening even as her eyes shimmer. She taps at her omnitool and then his beeps with the message transfer. 

He stares at the little blinking light, and then back at Liara. Liara nods, still smiling, and wipes away a tear. He accepts the message.

"Shepard?" he asks tentatively, after the comm beeps in his ear. 

_"Yeah,"_ Olivia’s voice comes in quiet, but strong and clear _. "Hi, Garrus."_

All his breath leaves him at once. "Olivia," he exhales. He leans against the wall.

"I’ll let you two talk," Liara whispers. A dim beep signals that she’s left the comm channel. She smiles, and gives his arm a little squeeze, and then she turns and heads into the elevator. 

Garrus quietly steps back into their quarters. He suddenly feels calmer, more at peace than he has in eight months. For the moment, he isn’t even hungry. Olivia is _alive_ , and he’s hearing her voice again. And this time, it isn’t to listen to her say goodbye. 

He doesn’t know what to say. _How are you_ seems too small, but anything else seems wrong. "You, you’re -" he stutters. He spent months preparing himself for the opposite news. It never once occurred to him how he’d feel learning that she _survived_. 

_"So are you,"_ she says, filling in the rest of his sentence for herself. 

Garrus hears the smile in her voice, and it brings one to his own face. He sits down in the middle of their bed as his emotions - a swirl of relief, gratitude, joy, happiness, fear, and everything in between - rise up in him, too overwhelmed for words. _She’s alive she’s alive she’s alive._

 _"You okay?"_ she asks after his silence stretches on. 

He takes a breath and nods. "Yeah. Spirits, I’ve missed you." His subvocals rumble quietly through his words \- no longer with sadness and despair, but with warmth and love. He closes his eyes and crushes the bear to his chest; he hasn’t heard those tones in a very long time. 

Olivia sniffles. _"I’ve missed you, too. And there’s food on the way. Thirty-six hours, tops."_

Garrus doesn’t even care how she did it. "Oh,” he gasps, “thank you.” He’s going to eat again, and soon. He really _won’t_ die of starvation on the way back to her. 

_"Hey, you promised me a house with a stupidly-large bathtub,"_ she grins, _"I’m just making sure you can deliver."_

Garrus laughs. "I’m glad I know where your priorities are."

 _"I gave you the food news first_ ," she teases. 

Now that he knows there’s hope on the horizon, it’s like his stomach finally decides to protest how empty it’s been. He closes his eyes against a cramp and a wave of vertigo. "Stop saying ‘food,’" he groans. 

_"Sorry. Oh! We’ve been in contact with Palaven. Your dad and Solana are okay."_

Garrus lets out another breath of relief and closes his eyes in sheer gratitude - to his spirits, to Olivia’s gods, to Ashley’s God, to Liara’s goddess, to the _universe_. Olivia is okay. His family is okay. He is going to be okay. 

They all made it.

"Thank you," he whispers. "Can you…"

 _"I’ll let them know,"_ she promises. 

"How are you?" he finally asks. 

She shifts, and he hears the rustling of blankets. She must be in bed. He listens hard, but he can’t hear any beeps or machinery in the background; she’s not in a hospital, and he closes his eyes, thankful.

 _"Hang on_ ," she says. _"Yeah?"_ she calls softly.

There’s dull murmuring as she has a conversation with someone.

 _"Sorry. Mom saw the light under the door and was worried._ "

Garrus lets out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding. Hannah’s alive too, and she’s with Olivia. Everyone really did make it to the other side of the war. 

_"I’m…okay_ ," she says, her voice suddenly wobbly and quiet.

"Liv?" he asks gently. She doesn’t _sound_ okay.

She sniffles and takes a shallow breath _. "It’s really good to hear your voice again."_

Garrus hears the tears in her voice, and he hugs the teddy bear tighter, as if he could hug hard enough and she’d be able to feel it. But all he can do is listen as she cries. This isn’t one last call at the Crucible, and it isn’t _if I’m up there in that bar and you’re not_ , yet somehow hearing her cry now is _worse_. He could _do_ something about these tears, if only he were there; he could hold her, hug her, brush his talons through her hair and press his lips to her temple, _comfort_ her. He exhales slowly and lets his love roll through his subharmonics. Maybe it’ll come through over the comm channel. 

_"Sorry_ ," she says after a while, once her tears have calmed. She sniffs. _"Been kinda rough."_

"Yeah," he agrees. _Kinda rough_ is certainly one way to describe the last eight months. "You’re okay?"

 _"More or less,"_ she says. _"I’m having some trouble sleeping_ ," she adds. By the waver in her voice, Garrus knows that it’s far more than just _some trouble_. He’s not surprised. Sleeping completely through the night hasn’t been in her skill set for a very long time.

 _"And, uh,”_ she hesitates, and it sets him on alert _. “Something fell on me, completely crushed my leg. Miranda hooked me up with a nifty prosthetic."_

"Shepard," he breathes. Part of him wonders what it is with the women in his life and injured legs. Better a leg than a life, he supposes.

 _"I’m okay, Garrus. I mean, if that’s the worst injury that I got from this war…"_ she trails off. _"It doesn’t make me any taller, though_ ," she pouts. 

Garrus laughs. Trust Olivia to turn a missing leg into a joke about her height. "I love you," he says with a smile.

 _"I love you,"_ she says.

His heart swells. He’ll never grow tired of hearing that.

_"You’re in one piece though, right?"_

"Yes," Garrus reassures her. His clothes are hanging off of him, he hasn’t slept well in recent memory, and it’ll be a long time before he’s back in fighting shape. Even with the promise of food soon, he’ll probably need to spend some time in a hospital when they finally make it back. But thanks to Olivia, he’s no longer in danger of actually starving to death.

They stay on the comm for hours, sometimes in silence just listening to each other breathe, until Olivia has to get ready for a meeting with Hackett. 

_"I’ll call you later_ ," she says. 

"Sounds good," he says. His throat’s suddenly tight - he actually _will_ talk to her later. The horror of the last months, not knowing if he’d ever hear her voice again, is truly _over_. He will talk to her in a few hours, and he will see her - kiss her, hug her, hold her, _touch_ her - in two weeks.

 _"I love you,"_ she says. 

He flicks his mandibles outward, smiling. "I love you, too."

***

Exactly two weeks later, Olivia stands on the dock, squinting upward at the sky. She shades her eyes against the sun, and peers at the clouds, searching for the telltale dot. Mostly, she sees birds. The _Normandy_ isn’t here yet - at last check, they’d just passed Mars - but she’ll be damned if she doesn’t look for them now anyway. 

She’s spoken to both Garrus and Liara every day for the past two weeks, sometimes more than once, and it’s like a weight has lifted from her shoulders. She feels like she’s standing up straight again, after months curled in protectively around herself. Her night terrors have even stopped. 

_Interesting coincidence_ , her therapist had said kindly. Olivia had rolled her eyes, but smiled. _Yeah. Interesting._

They aren’t gone for good - the terrors are too strong and too vivid to simply be banished by Garrus’ voice as she falls asleep, or the chime of Liara’s chat as she live-texts updates of Ashley’s Indiana Avenue triumph over James - but they’re gone for now. She’s slept better in two weeks than she has in almost a year. Zaeed even pulled her aside the other morning, making sure she really was sleeping okay and not just trying to hide it from him again. 

Zaeed may not be her father, but Olivia’s learned over the last eight months that he knows exactly where the line is. She’s also learned how much she appreciates that - both the line, and that he walks right up to it. She’d smiled and told him she was fine, and for the first time in a long time, both things were genuine and true. 

Hackett stands beside her, in his dress blues while she’s in black jeans and a dark blue shirt; it feels a little strange to be in civilian clothes on an Alliance dock, but a good strange - something she’s looking forward to getting used to. A dextro medical team waits a few steps behind them. Her supply ships may have gotten food to Garrus before it was too late, but he went a long time on nearly empty, and the _Normandy_ ’s dextro medical supplies were dwindling even before they headed to Earth for the final assault. Garrus will be fine, Dr. Chakwas and three turian doctors promised her exactly that, but he needs help. 

She spies press starting to line up along the edges of the dock, and sighs. "Did you have to invite them?" At least Wrex has ordered half a dozen krogan to stand as barricade, keeping the press from invading too much.

"I didn’t," Hackett says, with a weary sigh. 

Olivia smiles; she feels that sigh deep in her bones. The cameras and reporters are annoying, but truthfully, she’s not even sure she minds. Garrus and Liara are only a few minutes out, and nothing else matters. 

_"Flight, this is SSV Normandy,"_ Joker’s voice crackles over the comms. _"Requesting permission to land."_

_"Normandy, this is Flight. Permission granted. Dock 12. Come on home."_

Olivia swallows, hard. The lump in her throat hurts, and she bites her lip. 

_"You have no idea how good it is to hear that. Passing Luna now, see you groundside in eight minutes."_

_"Roger that. We have cake."_

_"In that case, seven minutes."_

Olivia laughs and looks back up at the sky. Soon, she sees a dark dot that grows bigger, and transforms into the _Normandy_ ’s familiar silhouette. She keeps her eyes on the ship, hardly even blinking as Joker brings them in slow and careful. 

The docking clamps extend and connect, and the _Normandy_ settles, sighs, as if even the ship herself knows that she’s home.

The airlock door opens with a hiss, and then everything else falls away. Hackett, the press, the rare sunshine, the birds, all of it. 

Ashley, Joker, Sam. The rest of the crew turns into a blur as Liara walks out, blinking in the bright sunshine. Olivia gasps; though she spoke with them every day, some part of her still worried that this was a dream. But Liara’s really here, this isn’t a dream, and she isn’t in danger of waking up. Olivia walks forward with a wide smile. Her walk turns into a run to meet Liara halfway for a hug that nearly knocks both of them over. 

"You’re here," Olivia says, wrapping her arms tight around her friend. 

Liara hugs her just as tightly. "So are you," she whispers. 

They stand in silence, holding each other as the rest of the crew disembarks and weaves around them. Olivia bites back tears and buries her head in Liara’s shoulder. Liara hugs her tighter, and she smiles.

After a few minutes, Liara shifts, and then gently nudges her.

Olivia looks up and inhales sharply. Leaning heavily on James and Steve, Garrus makes his slow way off the ship. He looks _terrible:_  frail, almost skeletal, all skin and plate and bones, but he’s _Garrus._ He’s here and he’s alive, and Olivia starts to cry.

"Go," Liara whispers, and presses a kiss to her cheek before she steps back. 

It’s only a few meters, but Olivia _runs_. She stops in front of him, and looks up. His mandibles flutter, and Garrus smiles at her with sparkling blue eyes. Her breath shakes and she presses a hand to her mouth. After eight long months of hell and loneliness and uncertainty, Garrus is here, right in front of her. She reaches out and trails her fingers down his arm.

"C’mere," he murmurs. Carefully, he steps forward, away from James and Steve, and folds his arms around her. He draws her in tight against him.

His warm arms feel like home. Letting her tears fall, Olivia brings her own arms up around him, hugging him to her. "I love you," she whispers. She turns and rests her cheek on his chest.

Garrus kisses the top of her head. "I love you," he says. As his subvocals rumble through his chest, she hears and feels the fear and loneliness he felt for eight months suddenly lift away. She hugs him tighter. He’s so thin, but he’s solid, real in her arms. 

"Captain, we need to take him now," one of the medics says as Garrus starts to shake. "You can ride with us, but we need to get going."

Nodding, Olivia presses a kiss to his chest and then steps back. She wipes at her eyes and stands out of the way as the medics get him onto a stretcher and start an IV.

"Olivia," he rasps, reaching his hand out to her. 

She catches his hand. Smiling, she bends down and bumps her forehead gently against his. "I’m right behind you," she promises. 


End file.
